Free to Love
by la Contessa
Summary: Kyouraku and Nanao care about each other, but it takes severe injuries to Kyouraku to finally bring them together. KyourakuNanao, some shoujo fluff, and some spoilers.


AN: I just had to write some cute fluff about one of my two favorite Bleach pairings. _There's a few spoilers if you're paying attention, so be warned_. About suffixes: I wanted to capture the accurate speech style of each character, but at the same time, I don't believe in using translatable Japanese terms in description. Therefore, suffixes have been used when people are talking to each other, but I've translated them to English in description (i.e. "taicho" becomes "captain" and "fukutaicho" becomes "lieutenant"). I hope that makes sense!

Thanks to Amy-chan for the editing!!

"Kyouraku-taicho, you have to fill out the evaluation forms!" Nanao, clutching the pile of blank forms to her chest, glared down in frustration at her captain as he sprawled on the roof. "Kyouraku-taicho!"

"Nanao-chan, you're blocking the sun," Kyouraku murmured, moving nothing but his lips. Nanao took one step back along the edge of the room with a huff.

"Kyouraku-taicho," she repeated, but he lifted on hand to stop her.

"I'll do the forms in a couple hours if you'll sit down and have some sake with me now."

"We don't have time for that!"

"I'll take that as a no." Kyouraku shifted to place both hands behind his head, his straw hat still pulled low over his face. "You need to relax, Nanao-chan, or life's going to pass you by."

"I believe it already has, sir," Nanao reminded him stiffly. "If you're going to be sitting up here all day, I should fill in the basic information so you don't have to waste too much of your precious nap time later." She pursed her lips in anger and leapt onto the roof of the next building, moving in the direction of the Eighth Squad headquarters. Kyouraku sighed.

"You can't get any lazier, can you?"

"I just don't see what paperwork has to do with hunting Hollows." Kyouraku lifted the brim of his hat to look up at Ukitake, standing over him with his hand on his sword.

"We need to keep track of the changing abilities of our warriors, so the paperwork can't be helped."

"I don't need paperwork to know who can do what in my squad."

"Of course not," Ukitake agreed with a smile. "But is it really worth harassing that poor girl about it?"

Kyouraku grimaced and sat up, stretching as he spoke.

"I'm not harassing her, Juushiro. It's unhealthy for her to be so strict with herself. Besides, I really would rather drink sake with her than fill out a bunch of forms." He yawned. "Did you come all the way over here to lecture me on my lieutenant?"

"Yamamoto-sensei wants us to supervise some first-years in the human world. Kuchiki-san was supposed to do it, but he got called away." Kyouraku clicked his tongue.

"So Yama-jii thinks the two of us together are only worth one Kuchiki Byakuya, eh?" He climbed to his feet and picked up his pink overcoat, shrugging it on. "I suppose we should go and follow orders like good little shinigami." Ukitake chuckled and motioned for Kyouraku to follow him to the academy. Kyouraku looked back over his shoulder in the direction of the Eighth Squad's headquarters. Yes, he would really rather be drinking sake with Nanao right now—it meant he would taste it on her lips if he kissed her. Now that was a vision to get him through the long, boring afternoon, he thought to himself with a wry smile as he leapt from roof to roof behind Ukitake.

BREAK

Kyouraku yawned, leaning against one chimney of an abandoned factory. He kept an eye out for teams of first-years making dramatic mistakes, but they were all well-trained enough that it wasn't really necessary. Soul Society's fake Hollows weren't all that threatening anyway.

"Sometimes I wonder how you even got this job," Ukitake complained with a chuckle from his seat against the second chimney. "I don't think I've seen you move once since we sat down."

"No reason to. The kids are doing a good job." Kyouraku nodded his head to the left. "Nasada and her team down there got three already, and it looks like Sawada's team is being creative." Ukitake laughed, then held a hand to his lips as he coughed. Kyouraku's eyes narrowed, but he waited patiently.

"Sorry. I think it's the air. But since you're watching them, how about—" A wave of spirit power washed over both men, and Kyouraku was out of his reclined pose in an instant, turning to face a black rift slowing opening above them. He saw Ukitake out of the corner of his eye, on his feet but leaning heavily against the chimney, and gritted his teeth.

"Hinamori, take the kids home," Kyouraku yelled down to the ground, where the startled first-years were huddling around their instructor. He assumed she would do as he said and eyed the rift with suspicion. It figured something would be drawn by the presence of so many shinigami in one place—it never failed, in fact.

"Are you alright, Juushiro?"

"Right enough. That's a big hole—"

"And we know what kind of Hollows Aizen controls," Kyouraku finished grimly. He lifted both swords of Katen Kyoukotsu to form a cross and murmured the poem that released the swords' Shikai. He could feel Ukitake's Sougyo no Kotowari behind him, but Kyouraku took little comfort from his friend's Soul Slayer. If Ukitake was feeling weak, the fight would be left up to Kyouraku. Since to say so would offend Ukitake, though, Kyouraku pretended he wasn't concerned.

"We need to make sure the kids get back to Soul Society first—keep it busy or something," he explained.

"Of course."

The familiar sharp, white tip of a Grand Menos' nose appeared in a corner of the rift, and Kyouraku twitched slightly. Another one joined it, and he cringed.

"Gotta get through this or Nanao'll nag me about it," he muttered, comforted by the thought that his lieutenant and her sweet-looking lips were waiting for him in Soul Society.

BREAK

"I can't believe him," Nanao muttered, pressing her pen hard into the paper as she filled in general information on the forms. "He's up there on the stupid roof with his stupid sake, and I'm in this stupid office working on _his_ stupid paperwork!"

She rubbed the back of her wrist across her forehead, leaving a smudge of ink. She'd been working on the stack of forms for four hours, with a short break for lunch. While she understood why Kyouraku wouldn't want to do it, it irked her that she was shouldering some of the suffering he was meant to bear.

"Frustrating man," she sighed, laying down her pen and leaning back in her chair. Kyouraku always managed to turn in his paperwork within a few days of its due date, but usually only through the assistance and constant pestering of Nanao. She normally only pretended to be angry, but this time she truly was furious.

Nanao had a lot of respect for Kyouraku's fighting ability and compassion for those in need, but his attitude toward everything else made her cringe. Rules and orders were made explicitly to be followed. How could Kyouraku blatantly ignore them all? She knew he cared about his squad and protecting the innocent, but he refused to put that caring into action through anything other than physically fighting for them. The work got dumped on Nanao's head, and that didn't seem fair at all.

"And then he'll just laugh a little and tell me to relax and drink his stupid sake, as if I could relax with all this paperwork sitting here. And of course, I'll give up and go do it myself like always, because he's so damn cute when he smiles at me like that," she muttered to herself with a sigh.

When had her frustration with her captain turned into a crush? When had she actually started wishing his flirting was serious? Nanao suspected it had been around the time he explained Ukitake's plan to rescue Kuchiki Rukia and told her softly that she was under no obligation to participate, and that he would take all the blame either way. She had sworn to help him then out of principle, but now she knew that it was partly an unwillingness to abandon her captain. No, not her captain—to abandon _Kyouraku Shunsui_ himself.

"I'm hopeless," she groaned, lowering her head. She sat there trying to calm her mind for a moment, before a fast knock at the door made her jump.

"Yes?"

"Ise-fukutaicho, Ukitake-taicho asked me to come and see how Kyouraku-taicho is doing," Kotetsu Kiyone explained with a quick bow. Nanao raised her eyebrows.

"I don't know why you'd come here and ask. He's off getting drunk somewhere, like usual," she answered wryly. Kiyone winced.

"Um, you don't know?"

"Know what?" Nanao asked cautiously, leaning forward with her arms folded on her desk.

"Er . . . Kyouraku-taicho and Ukitake-taicho went to the real world to watch some of the academy first-years, and some Grand Menoses showed up, which may have been sent by Aizen-taicho, and . . ." Kiyone trailed off as Nanao, her face white, stood up.

"They fought Grand Menoses? Just the two of them?"

"Ukitake-taicho was kind of ill today, so I think Kyouraku-taicho actually did the fighting . . ." Kiyone cringed. Nanao braced herself on the desk, feeling as if she hung suspended over a chasm and was about to plunge to its depths. Kyouraku fought _more than one_ Grand Menos practically on his own . . . he could be dead. He _should_ be dead.

"Isn't he at Fourth Squad's hospital?" Nanao's voice was calm, using years of practice to hide her emotions as her heart constricted in fear.

"He refused to stay. Unohana-taicho told me he said he wouldn't stay in a place where they wouldn't give him any sake, and then he got up and walked over here himself. Wounded, even! I ran over as soon as she finished."

"I don't know where he is, but I'll send someone over to tell you as soon as I find him." Nanao walked carefully around the desk, measuring each step precisely. She was so unstable inside that she thought her body would collapse if she wavered.

"Um, maybe I should wait here? Ukitake-taicho was really worried."

"Sure," Nanao responded, barely hearing the question as she stepped into the hall and closed the door behind her. She took a deep breath to force the tears back and sprinted down the corridor toward Kyouraku's room.

She slid to a halt on front of his closed door, and took a moment to catch her breath before knocking quickly. He had to be okay. Kyouraku was much too stubborn to ever die, right?

There was no response to her knock, so she knocked again, louder and more desperate. When there was no reaction to the second knock, she yelled Kyouraku's name. Nothing. Frantic, Nanao yanked the door open.

The room was empty. Nanao stood frozen in the doorway for an instant, her heart skipping a beat. Where could he be? Had he died in a gutter halfway between Fourth and Eighth Squads' headquarters? Nanao shook her head to clear the image, and once it had been pushed away, she noticed that the sliding door on the other side of the room was open. Of course. His hot spring.

Nanao dashed across the room and through the door, looking around for any sign of Kyouraku. There was a small hot spring pool built into the ground behind the headquarters, and it was one of Kyouraku's favorite places to relax. Nanao had spent many nights strategically averting her eyes while trying to get him to leave the pool and do some work. More recently, she had spent the nights trying to subtly sneak glimpses.

"Kyouraku-taicho!" she called out, hurrying toward the pool. When she got closer, she could see him leaning against the rocky perimeter, his chest and arms wound with cloth bandages. His head was tilted toward the sky, and he looked to be asleep. Of course, he always looked like he was asleep, but Nanao was particularly worried this time.

"Kyouraku-taicho?" she asked quietly, pausing a few feet from the edge. There was a pause, just enough time for Nanao to open her mouth to either say his name again or start crying, she couldn't tell. Now that she was closer, she could see more of his body beneath the water. The bandages continued below the towel draped around his waist, and his right leg sported the same cloth. The extent of his injuries made her cringe.

"Nanao-chan?" Kyouraku ground out, his voice gravelly and his eyes still closed. "Can you get me some more sake?"

Nanao choked on her next breath and fell to her knees on the ground near his head, sobbing into her hands. Whatever had happened to him, Kyouraku was fine as long as he was still asking for sake.

"Nanao-chan, what's wrong?" Kyouraku's eyes opened and he slowly rolled his head over to look at her. "Why are you crying?"

"Because . . . . because . . . I was mad at you all day because you weren't doing your paperwork, but you were fighting Grand Menoses by yourself instead and almost died," she sniffled, the words falling out of her mouth before she could think about it.

"I didn't almost die. You think a couple of big Hollows are going to stop me from coming back to you?" There was a small smile on Kyouraku's face when Nanao looked up, but he looked so ragged and in pain that she had to wince.

"I, er, well, Grand Menoses aren't easy to fight, and . . ." Nanao blushed, wiping tears from her cheeks. He was definitely okay, then, if he was flirting with her. Stupid man, didn't he know how cruel it was to her?

"Sssh," Kyouraku whispered. He gradually, bit by bit, raised his left arm from the water and laid his hand on the rock next to him. The soggy bandages were tinted pink with dissolving blood from the deep scratches crisscrossing his palm. Nanao gasped and seized his hand with both of hers, gently running her fingers over the cuts.

"Katen Kyoukotsu did this?" she murmured, holding his hand to her cheek as she looked down into his eyes. He shook his head slightly.

"Don't blame them. I had to defend myself and Juushiro, and they stood up well under the pressure." His fingers bent, rubbing lightly over Nanao's skin. "I just wanted to touch you. I thought about you during the fight . . . I wasn't sure if I was really seeing you now or if I got knocked out and left for dead and was just hallucinating."

"I'm really here," Nanao whispered, stunned that he had actually thought about her. The teasing smile he usually wore when flirting with her was gone, and in its place was a softer smile that, combined with his searching eyes, told her he was serious.

"Good. Will you stay with me?" When Nanao blinked, he chuckled lightly. "For an hour or so, at least. It hurts too much to lift the bottle, and I need a drink."

"Of course. To pour your drinks." Frustrated and confused by his return to humor, Nanao laid his hand back on the stone and stood stiffly, pursing her lips and wiping the arm of her shinigami robe across her eyes to clear away the hurt tears. Kyouraku had to be the most aggravating man in all the history of men, she just knew it.

"Nanao-chan?" Kyouraku called out as she headed toward his room to fetch another bottle of sake. She whirled around, trying to hide her annoyance. "You should get changed into something you can wear in the water, because after you get back with our sake, I'm going to kiss you so thoroughly you'll forget you were ever mad at me." Nanao froze for a second, before hurrying inside with his low laughter following behind her. She updated Kiyone and gathered up a new bottle of sake and two cups in a daze. As she returned to Kyouraku's room, she fervently hoped that for once, Kyouraku was serious about her, although she was afraid to admit that longing in so many words even to herself. She changed from her robes into a tightly knotted towel and nervously returned to the hot spring.

"I brought your sake," she announced to the ostensibly sleeping Kyouraku, who opened one eye to look up and down her body.

"I'm glad you changed," he responded, ignoring her words. "I don't have the strength to drag you in right now, and I don't think I could wait until I'm healed." Nanao blushed again and set the bottle and cups on the ground next to the pool.

"Are you sure—"

"Yes. Absolutely. Stop overthinking it and let your heart make the decisions for once." He had both eyes open now, looking up at her with a fierce longing, clearly tempered by a desire for Nanao herself to make the choice. That touched Nanao, and she was forced to take his advice as her heart cried out for him, louder than it ever had before.

She leaned forward, laying one hand lightly on his rough cheek as she met his eyes, her own clear and honest. The contentment slowly seeping into his gaze was the last thing she saw before she closed her own eyes and pressed her lips against his. That same contentment flooded her soul as she finally, after all this time, let her emotions free.


End file.
